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ZE WHOOLLY GHOST
I'ma guessing that we all feel that firey feeling of love inside our hearts.. I'm not gd at explaining it.. but you know that feeling of content, faith w/e u call it..
i think this is exactly the same as the holy ghost, in all religions i think its the same.. in this sense i kinda feel its silly that christians think its specific to them.. but merr..
anyway the holy ghost.. its faith and we all can feel that little fire inside of us when we have faith in something, for me im not sure exactly what that is, maybe its my decision basing and compassion,understanding but i do feel it...
did anyone watch derren brown convert a bunch of athetists to christians by waving his hand over them?
i think that this was because humans who don't understand how to live can be easily swayed by the right person or personality.. a person of great zeal can confused ppl with ease.. what these ppl felt was faith..
so i suppose.. is the faith.. seperate from God's or beliefs? its just our mind and isn't associated with anything specific but a feeling of right..
any idea's?
i think this is exactly the same as the holy ghost, in all religions i think its the same.. in this sense i kinda feel its silly that christians think its specific to them.. but merr..
anyway the holy ghost.. its faith and we all can feel that little fire inside of us when we have faith in something, for me im not sure exactly what that is, maybe its my decision basing and compassion,understanding but i do feel it...
did anyone watch derren brown convert a bunch of athetists to christians by waving his hand over them?
i think that this was because humans who don't understand how to live can be easily swayed by the right person or personality.. a person of great zeal can confused ppl with ease.. what these ppl felt was faith..
so i suppose.. is the faith.. seperate from God's or beliefs? its just our mind and isn't associated with anything specific but a feeling of right..
any idea's?
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Comments
But for the Christian's Holy Spirit... It's a significantly different sort of feeling... It enters you as long as you are in a room of worshipping Christians like it or not, though I can dismiss that as simply being another classic case of "mental energy"...
It's really nice to be in Christian ground though I must say... But then it is not right to base the truth on the feeling alone. Do you not always get the feeling too, when you step into old buildings you feel really small and really silent? When you step into a really small closet and are trapped in it, do you not imagine death under a coffin?
I guess it all has to do with atmosphere... But yes, the fire you speak of is universal, even though it varies in different tones.
i feel a fire burning within me and i think thas what it is.. faith.. .. mental energy most likely.. a blurry feeling of self worth due to religious criteria
My understanding of it, is reflected in the phrase 'I am the Universe' by the founder of Aikido. Experiencing a state of oneness?
Only when we have accurate data will we be able to judge whether they apply to all such states or whether there are state-specific differences.
1. My understanding of Christian theology is that the Holy Ghost is God. I have been in "Services with the Spirit" and it definitely seemed more emotional than true religious feeling. One of the last services I went to was one. Someone turned to me and said "You are not in the Spirit". I wanted to sit and be quiet as others were up singing, clapping and yelling. It didn't seem to be anything but a pep rally.
2. Most atheists would not be swayed by someone waving there hand over them. They would go "and?". Since I'm agnostic at heart, I must say that atheists/agnostic are more of a thinking bunch and I would doubt the validity of that statement. I would have to talk to the people who "converted" to believe it.
3. I'm not real up on this, but I had read that there is something called the "hara" that is supposed to be in the abdomen that one can feel during times of religious feeling. I have felt it at times. Not many, but Simon might know much more on this (and thousands of other things) than I.
I attain similar feelings of content and compassion when having healthy intellectual conversations or helping someone in need. I realized that the smallest deed is greater than the longest prayer.
i doubt it would work on buddhists but for athetist ppl with no actual idea of how to live its quite easy..
yea whenever i talk to ppl or even play chess my mind feels content.. having decussions with ppl has that effect on all ppl i think..
I'm learning to play chess after 41 years! What a cool game. Are you on ICC?
Also, didn't find the video. Would love to see that! He couldn't convert me.
I doubt anyone could reconvert me. Although I have heard of something called 'Bible Boot Camp'. I would probably just enjoy it for the debates and discussions.
I am using a program to teach me how to play. I go to ICC and watch people play. I'm amazed at how fast some of the people are. I never expect to be great, but if I could play well I will be satisfied.
And the competetive side of me would come out!
It is one of the most cut-throat competitive game I have ever played. It even beats fencing in my experience.
username:celebrin
competitive.. yea.. i tend to loose concentration if the games going too easy for me.. after about 3-4 games i totally have lost concentration.. overworked meself
chess can be reallt annoying, i was owning my dad.. i saw through all his moves and planned ahead pinning him in over and over and i was 1 piece up.. then i lost my concentration.. overlooked 1 thing and ended up in stalemate
Please remember I am learning. I wouldn't say I know how to play yet. I'm just asking for a little mercy. Not much. Remember, we're Buddhists. But I guess that doesn't count when you're playing chess.
Screenname: JerbearRN
Adiana:type: :usflag:
One thing I would suggest is go to Amazon.com and type in Majestic Chess. It's the program that I'm using. It's geared for kids but it's quite fun. You can play it three ways, online with other players, Adventure for learning, or against the computer and take tutorials. The tutorials are the same things as in the Adventure. I play adventure as you to complete tasks to beat monsters and such. I know it's cheesy, but it makes me smile when I've done something. But it is only 10 bucks. Sure does beat the 50 for ICC if $$$ are an issue.
Jerry,
Well, I was close! International Chess Club and I had International Chess Conference! LOL! Thanks for the tips; I will check it out. I have a beginner's knowledge of chess but that's about it! LOL! I have always wanted to learn more about it. I shall give it a try later on this evening. I have to catch up with my college coursework first! I do not know why I opted to take classes this summer! SIGH! Oh, well! I will be that much closer to earning my MBA!
Adiana:type: :usflag:
From my active study of the Christian religion... I have come to come up with four scenarios of conversion:
(i) Faith -
You stand helplessly in front of a whole live Christian band playing some upbeat tune to an entire congregation and WHAM!!! ZE WHOLLY GHOST WHACKS YOU IN THE STOMACH!!!
(ii) Reason -
"Hmmm.... If all that exist has a cause, then what caused the Universe? OOOHHH!!! It's GOD!!!!"
(iii) Faith Overcomes Reason -
"There is no God because if...." a man in his 20s.
"But hey! Perhaps, maybe, during my time in prison, He came to me despite all my rational beliefs!" the same man in his 50s.
(iv) (BAD HUMOUR!!) Peer Pressure -
"Hey, you are my friend right? Look, do you believe that He is the Risen One? FIVE-FOUR-THREE-TWO-"
"YES I DO!!!!"
Well... I am speaking from the viewpoint of a teen who well... Confused/Experimenting/Feeling/Living/Dwelling/Whatever in religion for quite some time but in the end found himself... Christianity... Islam... Buddhism... Folk Taoism... Whatver... All of these religions, if you pick Faith as the approach to go in to, will produce very different feelings, but all these suited to the context of their teachings.
And mind you, I really took them sincerely, I entered them Faith first before Reason took me away.
Islam... Ah... How I remember... Peace... Vastness... The same feeling you will get when you hear of Muslims speak of the Crossing of the Bridge at the Judgement... Like all of the mountains that surround you seem to distance themselves however you walk closer... Heck, it's really nice!
Christianity... You just have to stand in any modern youth congregation to feel the Spirit... Love... A mutual bond... Jesus... ZE WHOOLLY GHOST!!! It's of course nice too!
Must I talk about Buddhism? At times it just feels about the same as feeling just naturally happy to me.
Folk Taoism... Well... It's the Seventh Month now, the Opening of the Gates of Hell. Just stand in presence of a man said to be possessed by a god and you can just feel it, that of something not quite here, alive but not quite human, in fact feeling very lord-like deserving of worship...
Well I can go on and on... At times you don't even make a conscientious effort... Most of the time you only have to stand in some religious gathering to feel it...
Either way... Perhaps it is true that wherever you seek God, you will find God, but that does not rationalize why we feel so differently religion-to-religion, even though modern neurotheology seems to produce the claim that ALL RELIGIONS GIVE THE SAME END-PRODUCT.
Of course, I do not boast to be so much as a religion major, let alone a neurotheology authority, and I may in fact be guilty of charges of apostasy, blasphemy, heresy, demon worship, and various other charges of every religion of every human, and heck, Hell is where I will go! (Even though to Christians I always speak to them whenever they try to convince me that I believe that God will judge fairly - if he ever exists, he should know what and why do I do everything I do)
But then here I guess we must always look into context. The human mind is an amazing collection of neurons and emotional centres, and in one of my threads earlier I'd have (by mistake) outlined some zones in the brain which served as a basis for a sort of "attack" on Buddhism.
I believe that when the Spanish colonized the Americas and made Catholics out of the Indians, the latter, well, might not have understood the message after all if we consider language as a barrier, but still, I do feel that some other forms of psychology/communication was at work in exonerating the Christian ideals. (Body language, creation of this feeling in context via Christians present, "collective unconscious"? etc.) But this is not the main point, my main point is that the human mind is capable of putting feelings/emotions/intensities/faith into the context of ideals/visions/experiences/reason and so on and so forth.
Well, again, I am not a neurotheologian at all, but maybe I would just like to say that religion indeed is a construct of the human mind's neurotheology department - but perhaps religious ideals itself is something that any creature may do with a working memory and proper logic - in their logic department. This will explain why religious experiences feel so different even as neurotheology shows their similarities, for despite the brain's "lighting up" of the same zones upon fMRI scans (I think it's fMRI) which we can see, we may not have the technology to read the content of what the subconscious head is thinking as it fits the feelings into context.
Any views? :rockon:
I find the title of this thread suggests that it is 'humourous'. You demonstrate the other side of such humour: disrespect.
Your analysis of some bits of minority parts of a few religions makes them (and their adherents) stupid or gullible, whereas, if you were to spend time on reading or meeting thinking members, you might be really surprised. Judging a faith system from its superstitions will find them all easy to parody.
When you move on to "neurotheology", you clearly agree with Michael Persinger's reductionist experiments, whereas I find myself more convinced by Pehr Granqvists's criticism of Persinger's methods. This is a brief article from the Economist:
God and the gap
After all, Huxley invented the term 'neurotheology' as a philosophical concept. To try to transform it into a scientific theory is strange, as strange as trying to read The Da Vinci Code as historically, geographically or theologically accurate.
The sort of 'joke' implicit in the thread title does not just aim at Christians, of course, but is also disrespectful of such great souls as the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and those others who have found deep truth in the Jesus scriptures.
I suggest that you pursue your active study of Christianity by turning your attention to somebody like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
I wish to say that when I talk of the Faith, be it the Spirit, or it be Peace or anything that may be felt, they are not creations of absolute entities such as the religion itself, but rather the individual with his own concepts and ideals about his/her religion, who manifests those ideals into emotions and feelings, which are then imposed upon the individual-in-question back once more.
I have no wish to turn neurotheology into a science of course, for Science will only take it all that may have a chance of being disproved. But referring to Michael Persinger's ideals, and it all starting from a philosophical concept, I do believe strongly that neurotheology is after all, a type of science, even though it may not be incorporated within the main disciplines of it. Science is after all, an extension of common sense (which is in no manner meant as a cruel pun), so as to speak, but I do think that pursuing the actual definition of what is Science is not beneficial to our argument. But if I must account for something, then consider my last post being a philosophical post instead of a scientific post.
On my reductionist experiments, I would just like to suggest that currently among the research world, there has not been a common consensus on whether Persinger indeed had been exposed by Granqvist's paper, which is quoted as saying that the "Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak magnetic fields". In fact, Persinger and at least a few others have stood up to defend the former's tests, one of whom is Todd Murphy ( http://www.innerworlds.50megs.com/ ), who has been associated with Persinger himself. But if it may still be pushed that Granqvist is the more credible and consistent of the two, then my argument may be rejected totally and I will allow it to be removed.
I am not exactly an "old bird" in the field of such "spiritual aspects of neuroscience", so please do fill me in on details I may have missed out - after all, I argue for the sake of wanting Truth, and not argue simply to attack some ideal I may not see as the Truth.
My purpose behind the post was actually to rationalize the feelings (faith) experienced by the various individuals scattered amongst various beliefs into a common mainframe, and absolutely not, and I stress, absolutely not at all, to rationalize religion into nothing but a mere construct of the human mind. We cannot forget that other than faith, traditional religion also advocates reason, for if without it theology and even science itself could not possibly have existed, and I rationalizing faith alone can only fit it into the frame of reason and not fit it into the frame of "anti-religion". I hope to make this distinction very clear. Even feelings themselves, however irrational, have to very logically have a cause, isn't it? And that is what I was hoping to do - tracing the cause. If there is anyone confused by my rebuttal/clarification, or may not be able to follow it, I am more than delighted to explain.
I am not showing disrespect, that was never my motive. And besides, these all I will have to disclaim, is all the thinking that a 15-year old may muster and produce - and I do not wish for this to be an excuse unto any distress I may cause. If there is still any thing anyone wishes to raise, from being it me misunderstand anything to me being a complete Hell-bound person, please do so.
Lastly, a leaf from your own book, Simon, whom I must apologize in advance for not asking you any permission to use it for my own:
:rockon:
meditation itself changes hormone levels.. is that running away from reality? i do wonder sometimes
faith is pretty easy to get.. i mean if something makes enough sense or u talk to for long enough to zealots you will start getting the itches
i'll show u a christian forum
http://www.christian-rpg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2732
http://www.christian-rpg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2759
http://www.christian-rpg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1561
oh yes and there are more ...
several believe that they have experienced magic powers, demons, and strange things.. the holy ghost and all sorts of weird spiritual experiences..
such as the flamey hands making it hard to type on a keyboard
i'm not saying that they don't believe but I'm a little more than sceptic about the % of ppl who claim to have powers in this christian forum
and since i started the thread ze whoolyy ghost... no its not meant to be offensive
I am amazed at the knowledge in this thread! Especially from one as young as AJ! It really got me thinking.(we're in trouble now)
When I was much younger my mum sent me to church camp for two weeks one or two summers, and sunday school often. During church camp, we got "saved" every evening at worship. I felt the "faith" during one of these sessions. It was like a drug. It didn't take long to wear off. In the end, it's just as impermanent as everything else.
For me it's like this; starting at "God" and going backwards is impossible. Buddha tought me I can start from another direction and get somewhere.
Celebrin,
You're misunderstanding Buddhist meditation. Buddhist meditation is sitting with things as they are. It's about facing reality and even more than that, gaining insight by facing realty and what really is. It's the opposite of running away from reality. I'm a little surprised that you'd have such a misunderstanding of it. It's the core of experiential Buddhist practice.
its like a drug.. and it is addictive
it does make me think
Hmmm... I don't know about that...
I've won epee matches using a big, goofy fall that allowed me to score a point to my opponents toe.
Although... to watch those people do speed chess - it is truly amazing.
I did start learning simple strategies from this book when I was a youngin: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553263153/sr=8-1/qid=1154364893/ref=sr_1_1/002-3545564-0988827?ie=UTF8
It was a good beginner book for a boy...
-bf
Hold me.
-bf
I've heard that masturbation can become an addicktion as well!:crazy:
*thinking* Was that below the belt?
regards,
xray
In meditation I take a break from my troubles, and even if they come up, I'm just an observer. I find that that can very addictive, and I'll take all I can get.